Comic Book / Megalex

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The cover of the first volume, featuring Adamâ and a Megalex Shock Trooper

A soft science-fictiongraphic novel written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Fred Beltran. The book is published by French publisher Humanoids, set in the same universe as Jodorowsky's other science fiction comics, The Metabarons and The Incal. Megalex is a City Planet ruled by a royal family and an elite noble class. The common people are kept addicted to drugs and kept in line by police clones programmed to be loyal to the ruling class and implanted with control tabs that will kill them after four hundred days of life. The common folk can only live to forty, while the ruling class can hope for at least four hundred years, and the actual royal family will live for over four thousand.

The entire surface of the planet except for the oceans and a small area of forest (known as the Chem Forest) is covered in urban sprawl with absolutely no organic matter. But beneath the city, the tunnel-like ruins of the old city lead to a series of massive, unfathomed caverns seven thousand feet below the surface, teeming with underground life. The rebels live in the caverns, occasionally venturing to the surface to raid the city.

The first protagonist we are introduced to is the an anomalous police clone who is almost twice the size of the rest of his brethren, spared customary termination by an alien attack on the city that drew the cloning factory overseers away from their duties. He is rescued from the surface by the lovely freedom fighter Adamâ, and brought down to the subterranean world. There, he meets a resistance leader named Zerain. Zerain is a mutant with a hunchback who also seems to be destined to lead an open rebellion on the surface. He also seems to be in love with the main antagonist, the princess Kavatah. Kavatah herself is a beautiful woman who hates everything about the Chem Forest and the underground rebels.

Like all of Jodorowsky's work, Megalex features surreal science fiction technology including some that may or may not be magic. It's not as dark as The Metabarons, but still quite brutal and featuring plenty of gorgeously-drawn nudity and Scenery Porn. Beltran uses a hybrid hand-drawn and computer-generated style that gives the whole book a unique look. Three volumes have been released so far, only the first in English as of yet.

Megalex includes the following tropes:

Action Girl: Adamâ is a very effective fighter, and doesn't take shit from anybody.

Adamâ. She has large breasts and wears a very revealing set of overalls. Ram obviously is fond of them and gropes her when she tells him to "grab my waist" to hold on during a hippodrile ride. She is not amused by Ram's mistake.

Shalise, the holographic projection of the police clone training ship. She tells the clones that she's been "endowed with a feminine personality" while she caresses her considerable bust.

Can't Have Sex, Ever: Seems to be the case with Princess Kavatah, at least as of Volume 1. A noble general tries to touch her romantically, and he bursts into flame. She believes it to be a curse.

Expendable Clone: The police clones are terminated after living for four hundred days, the limit enforced by explosive control tabs implanted at the base of their skulls. This is done to prevent them being infected by dissidents. The clones are filed into a large room like a group show, made to strip, disinfected to allow more efficient recycling, and then their control tabs are detonated. The allusions to concentration camps are obvious.

Explosive Leash: The control tabs implanted in every citizen. The Undergrounders remove them from new recruits.

One-Winged Angel: When she spots Ram in the back of the ship, Shalise transforms into an absolutely terrifying monstrous version of herself. Her mouth fills with fangs, her ears become bat-like, she grows in size, and worst of all, her beautiful breasts become pendulous and rotten, tipped with corroded metal blades.

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